CMS Compromise Gives Parkland Reprieve

Parkland Memorial Hospital has agreed to bring in an outside consultant to craft a plan of improvement for the Dallas hospital, in hopes of protecting its $417 million in funding from Medicare and Medicaid.

I think the authors of this article should make it clear that Parkland was indeed terminated from participating in Medicare programs as of Sept. 30 of this month. So, Parkland is the largest hospital in the history of the US to be terminated from Medicare, surpassing the previous title holder, King/Drew in LA. CMS only allowed a compromise for "probationary" terms for Parkland to continue to operate by forcing the hospital into a "service improvement agreement." That compromise occurred because Parkland is the only public hospital serving the Dallas area. If the hospital closed, then there were no other safety net hospitals to pick up the slack. The point is that Parkland was deemed such a bad hospital that it would have closed down, if it wouldn't have caused a catastophic collapse of public health services in Dallas.

Doug Keiller (9/12/2011 at 3:03 PM)

Public hospitals serving large Latino populations (Dallas, Houston, LA, Chicago, Phoenix, etc.) are a critical public resources, but face huge operating challenges. One cost-effective strategy the CMS-approved consultants should explore is improving ER and OB operating efficiency by training and sourcing more fully bilingual staff. Currently, a large portion of patient conversations require interpretation, which slows service delivery by up to 50%. Bilingual staff (RNs, etc.) have been shown to triage ER patients faster, for example, reducing wait times, and improving initial assessment accuracy. In OB, speeding patient communication with bilingual staff can free up time to focus on infection control and other safety procedures.